by Susan Rosenbluth,
Editor, Jewish Voice and Opinion

December 2008

It seems small wonder that Jewish-British biographer Anne Sebba would be fascinated by the lives of Louise and Ida Cook. The sisters’ life story reads like one of the romances Ida Cook, writing as Mary Burchell, produced by the hundreds for Mills & Boon, the literary counterpart of its American sister publishing house, Harlequin.

With an international backdrop of glittering opera houses, soirees with world-famous musicians and singers, and death defying air travel when aviation was still in its infancy, the British Cook sisters, during the 1930s, rescued approximately 50 Jews from Nazi Germany right under the noses of Hermann Goering, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Julius Streicher, and Joachim von Ribbentrop (who, the Cook sisters said, once gave Louise "the glad eye" across the breakfast room at the Vier Jahreszeiten—Four Seasons—Hotel in Munich).

In 1965, they were recognized by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Authority as righteous gentiles.

Last month, Harlequin reissued Ida Cook’s original memoirs of those days. Written in 1950 as We Followed Our Stars, the book is now entitled Safe Passage.

The titles are telling. Ms. Cook’s original title refers not only to destiny and high ambition, but also to the stars of opera that she and her sister idolized. The new title refers to the efforts made by the sisters to rescue Jews.

The introduction to the book was written by Ms. Sebba, a British biographer and journalist, who had initially intended to write her own biography of the Cook sisters. Unfortunately for Ms. Sebba, there was precious little documentary evidence. Neither of the Cook sisters ever married and their only family members as well as the Jews they had rescued were either deceased or too ill to be of assistance.

Among the places Ms. Sebba visited looking for source material was the editorial office of Mills & Boon, the house that had published all of Ida Cook’s (Mary Burchell’s) romances as well as We Followed Our Stars. While the publishers did not have much to offer regarding biographical material, they did inform Ms. Sebba that their American counterpart, Harlequin, was about to reissue the original book.

"Since I didn’t have enough to write a full biography, they offered me the opportunity to write the introduction," said Ms. Sebba, who was in New York last month to promote the new book’s publication. "I was thrilled."

Like many Jews writing after the Holocaust, Ms. Sebba said she found it fascinating that these two "very ordinary women had undertaken to do such extraordinary things."

"They were decent people who saw the world in simple terms: good and evil, black and white. They followed their parents’ example and did what they recognized as clearly right," she said.

Born at the turn of the 20^th century (Louise in 1901 and Ida in 1904), the Cook sisters were raised in a close knit family in the London suburbs and remained devoted constant companions all their lives. Neither of them ever married.

When they finished school, they found work in London as British civil servants, Louise as a clerical assistant in the Board of Education, and Ida as a copy typist.

They remained at home with their parents and two younger brothers, and did not seem to crave any of the excitement the big city had to offer.

That all changed in 1923 when the sisters were introduced to the art form that became their unlikely passion: opera.

In their parents’ home, there were no radios or record players, and certainly not a piano. The girls had no music education and seemed totally disinterested in pursuing any of the arts.

Nevertheless, their lives were transformed on the day music wafted into their bedroom from a neighbor’s home: the aria, Un Bel Di Vedremo from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, performed by the renowned Italian coloratura soprano Amelita Galli-Curci.

Almost instantaneously, the sisters were hooked. Louise spent her entire bonus from work on a hand-cranked gramophone that came with ten classical records, which included a few performances by Ms. Galli-Curci.

And they began attending performances at London’s Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, opting for the cheapest seats they could find in the gallery. Louise’s first ticket was for Madam Butterfly, but she and Ida went back to hear Tosca, La Traviata, and Rigoletto.

The sopranos were their heroines, and the sisters became regulars at the backstage door, waiting patiently for the singers to emerge so they could ask for an autograph or even to have a picture taken with the small camera they always took along.

Ms. Galli-Curci became their favorite, and the sisters were crushed when, after hearing her in a recital at Albert Hall, they learned that she performed in full operas only in New York.

They wrote to the singer, telling her they intended to travel to New York in order to see her, and Ms. Galli-Curci responded, "If you ever succeed in coming to America, you shall have tickets for everything I sing."

They immediately began planning how to save the £100 (about $150) they figured the trip would cost. For two years, they ate only brown rolls, bought no new clothes or sweets, and never took the bus if they could walk.

In December 1926, they sailed third class on the Berengaria and took a room in a hotel in Washington Square. Their first stop was to Ms. Galli-Curci’s agent to pick up their tickets.

The next night, fully decked out in opera fashions Ida had sewn for them (a scarlet opera cloak for Louise and a pink and silver one for Ida) they went to the Metropolitan Opera House on 39^th Street and Broadway to hear Ms. Galli-Curci in Verdi’s La Traviata.

To their delight, during her encore, Ms. Galli-Curci singled them out in the audience and waved. Then, she sent a Cadillac to pick the sisters up and take them to her Fifth Avenue apartment. In her book, Ida Cook said they curled up on her library sofa and chatted about "anything from Mozart’s chamber music to reincarnation."

"The trip changed their lives," said Ms. Sebba. "It showed them that they could indeed ‘follow their stars.’"

It also changed Ida Cook’s life professionally. In order to create their New York opera clothes, she had relied on Mab’s Fashions, a popular magazine, and, when the sisters returned to London, Ida stayed in touch with the editor. Ida submitted a few articles, such as one entitled "At Home with Galli-Curci," and they were published.

In 1929, the Cook sisters discovered a new heroine, the American soprano Rosa Ponselle, whom they heard at her debut at Covent Garden in Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma.

Not all their stars were women. The Cook sisters also developed an attachment to the baritone Tito Gobbi and the controversial conductor Clemens Krauss. In 1934, when they first saw Mr. Krauss, he was the director of the Vienna Staatsoper who had come to Covent Garden to conduct his wife, the Romanian soprano Viorica Ursuleac, in Richard Strauss’s new opera, Arabella.

That summer, the Cook sisters traveled to Salzburg just to hear Mr. Krauss conduct again.

"It was just after the Nazis assassinated Austrian chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss and many Jews were already leaving Germany, but the only thing troubling the Cook sisters at that time was that politics might interfere with the opera season," said Ms. Sebba.

Politics certainly did not interfere with the Cooks’ enjoyment of the music festival, where they became friendly with Ms. Ursuleac and wrangled invitations to attend her dress rehearsals.

At one of those rehearsals, they were introduced to Frau Mitia Mayer-Lismann, a Jewish musicologist who served as the official lecturer of the Salzburg Festival. A resident of Frankfurt, she was also a close friend of Mr. Krauss and his wife.

The fact that Mr. Krauss had Jewish friends did not stop him in 1935 from accepting the position of director of the Berlin Staatsoper, a move which led to his forced appearance before a de-Nazification committee after the war.

But in 1934, Mr. Krauss and Ms. Ursuleac persuaded the Cook sisters to "look after" Ms. Mayer-Lismann when she and her family came for a planned visit to London. Ms. Ursuleac made her request at the train station, as she was preparing to leave Salzburg. She took the Cook sisters by the arm, and when she secured their promise, the soprano assured her Jewish friend, "Now, you will be all right."

"We remembered that scene again and again in the years that followed, for though we did not know it then, our first refugee had been commanded to our care," Ida wrote in her memoir.

When Ms. Mayer-Lismann and her family arrived in London, the Cooks took them sightseeing. At Westminster Abbey, the sisters asked their guests if they were Catholic or Protestant.

"Mayer-Lismann looked at the sisters as if they were mad and told them they were Jewish," Ms. Sebba said. "The Cooks simply responded, ‘Oh, we didn’t know.’"

Gradually, the Mayer-Lismanns informed their hostesses about what was happening to their people under the rule of the Nazis and the obvious long-term threat.

"We began to see things more clearly and to see them, to our lasting benefit, through the eyes of an ordinary devoted family like ourselves. By the time the full horror of what was happening in Germany, and later in Austria, reached the newspapers, the whole thing had become almost too fantastic for the ordinary mind to take it in. It took a war to make people understand what was happening in peace time, and very many never understood it. To us, the case of the Mayer-Lismanns was curious and shocking, but we did what I suppose most people would have done. We asked, ‘Where did they hope to go? And what could we do to help?’ It was all what I can only describe as un-urgent to us in those days," wrote Ida Cook.

While the sisters found their extensive travel schedule exhilarating, it was hard on their pocketbooks. By 1935, they were out of cash. "Our appetite for foreign travel was beginning to grow alarmingly," wrote Ida Cook.

The editor at Mab’s Fashions came to their rescue, suggesting that Ida Cook write a piece that could be serialized in the magazine.

While the editor had suggested "something strong," she was not prepared for the material Miss Cook supplied. Entitled "Wife to Christopher," the piece, obviously a mixture of operatic romance and, perhaps, the author’s own repressed desires, was a tale of steamy kisses and glowing skin shimmering through nightgowns, culminating in what can only be described as violent marital rape, which the heroine did not find distasteful.

The story was not right for Mab’s Fashions, but the editor sent it to Mills & Boon, where it was bought for $60 and the promise of 10 percent of all sales.

The book was a huge success, and, in 1936, Ida was asked to produce three longer novels, with significantly higher advances. In 1937, she signed a third contract, this time for four novels.

Writing under the name Mary Burchell, Ida Cook eventually became the most lucrative and prolific of all Mills & Boon novelists. Over the next 50 years, she wrote 130 romance novels.

Despite their new-found economic success, the sisters continued to live in their parents’ home, spending money on their operatic adventures and saving the rest.

They had remained in touch with the Mayer-Lismanns, and when the family was ready to leave Frankfurt, the Cooks were ready to help.

This was no easy matter. Britain was prepared to allow German Jews to enter the country, provided they had proof that their stay would be brief, which meant demonstrating that they had somewhere else to go. Even then, they could come into the country only if a British citizen guaranteed to accept financial responsibility for them until they reached their final destination.

Children under the age of 18 were allowed into Britain if a British citizen was willing to stand as guardian. A woman could enter if there was evidence that she had accepted a job as a domestic servant that had been advertised.

The hardest to help were men between the ages of 18 and 60.

By the late 1930s, Ida Cook was earning close to $1500 per year as a novelist, more than five times her salary as a typist. In her book, she wrote that she became "intoxicated" by the sight of her money and "the terrible, moving, and overwhelming thought—I could save life with it."

Their first case was Ms. Mayer-Lismann’s 17-year-old daughter, Else, who was then a music student. In 1937, the Cook sisters took care of the necessary paper work, signed the financial guarantee, and brought the young woman to London.

For the next two years, the sisters made numerous quick trips into Nazi Germany to save Jews. Posing simply as what they were, eccentric spinster opera lovers willing to travel anywhere for their beloved art, they typically left London on Fridays after work hours and returned in time for Louise to report back to her office on Monday mornings.

Often the Cooks flew to Germany and then returned to England via Holland by ship.

For the most part, the Nazi border guards simply ignored them.

As word spread in German-Jewish communities that two English sisters were willing to help, hundreds of letters, most of them addressed simply to "Ida and Louise," began appearing at the British Refugee Headquarters.

While refugees fleeing Germany were forbidden by the Nazis to take their money or possessions out of the country, they were able, while in Germany, to convert their cash into exportable goods, which the Cook sisters were prepared to carry across the border into England.

Once the goods were in England, the sisters would sell them and either establish bank accounts in the prospective refugees’ names, allowing them to be their own financial guarantors, or would give the cash to willing British citizens, who would then sign the necessary papers for the Jewish refugees to enter Britain.

Most often, German Jews gave the Cook sisters jewelry, especially diamonds and pearls. "These two oh so plain women, wearing their inexpensive chain-store jumpers, often left Germany with pearls and diamonds. Of course the customs officials believed they were all fakes," said Ms. Sebba.

Furs presented a different challenge. Before leaving for Germany, the Cooks would visit London furriers to secure labels, which they tucked away. When German Jews brought them fine furs, the sisters replaced the German labels with those they had brought from London.

While the sisters continued to reside in their parents’ home, they used Ida’s advances and royalties to purchase an elegant apartment in London’s prestigious Dolphin Square so that "their" refugees could have an address.

In between their meetings with German Jews, the sisters managed to get to the opera, but, in 1937, they began to worry. Some of the immigration officials in Cologne had begun to question them too intensely.

To help them improve their credentials as crazy opera lovers, Mr. Krauss, who, by that time, had been transferred to the Munich State Opera, supplied them with convincing details of all performances, including cast lists. He even allowed them to select the programs so that when they came, they could enjoy their favorite operas.

"Sometimes we thought we could not bear to go back yet again into that hateful, diseased German atmosphere, and for that extra bit of courage and determination which took us back time after time, Clemens Krauss and Ursuleac must take full credit," wrote Ida Cook.

As part of their ruse, they stayed at the finest hotels, where they often ran into high-ranking Nazis. "We even knew Hitler from the back," wrote Ida. "If you stood and gazed at them admiringly as they went through the lobby, no one thought you were anything but another couple of admiring fools."

In Frankfurt, the sisters found a Roman Catholic woman who was eager to work with them "from the inside." Identified by Ida simply as Frau Jack, she drew up lists of potential families for the sisters to interview in a room in her house.

In an interview with McCall’s magazine in 1966, Ida refused to compare their efforts to "playing G-d." "It was more like gambling at Monte Carlo. I still shudder when I think about it. The Jew who had a practical skill—an electrician or an engineer—sometimes made it ahead of the intellectual," she said.

The easiest to save were those who had converted all their material assets into diamonds. With the jewels in hand, the sisters could convince their own British friends, family members, and even strangers to act as guarantors.

The Cooks seemed to have little patience for those Jews who insisted on holding onto furniture and fine works of art instead of converting them into easy exportables.

In November 1938, after Hitler ordered all Jewish males in Germany, Australia, and Czechoslovakia into concentration camps, the push to escape became a surge. Safe in London, Ms. Mayer-Lismann handed the sisters a list of names and addresses with the words "G-d bless you and help you" scribbled on top. The list included Lisa Basch, a 25-year-old photographer whose father, a wealthy industrialist, had already been taken to Dachau.

Ms. Basch was the only one of her family to remain in their once-imposing home in Frankfurt. When her father was arrested, the Nazis trashed the home, ripping paintings, shattering china, even tearing out the keys of the grand piano.

Her two brothers were already in the US, and her sister and her husband were preparing to leave. Her father was released from prison on condition that he leave Germany immediately. He and his wife had been given a guarantee by a business associate in France.

As soon as Ida Cook found a British guarantor for the young photographer, she too was able to leave.

What had started as an adventure became a tragic race against time for the Cooks. "They hated the fact that they could not help every family they met," said Ms. Sebba.

It all came to an end on September 1, 1939. Britain and Germany were officially at war, and even the eccentric opera lovers could no longer venture into enemy territory.

While the number of Jews they saved is usually listed as 29, Ms. Sebba pointed out that the actual total is at least double. "That is the number of surnames on their lists. Most of them represent whole families that were saved," she said.

In her book, Ida Cook said they tried "to concentrate on whole families."

"As part of a happy family, we knew that it would be poor comfort to be rescued if a beloved mother or father, brother or sister, still lingered in the shadow of death," she wrote.

After they could no longer rescue Jews, the sisters remained actively engaged in their efforts to help. They raised money to sponsor refugees and spoke out tirelessly against the horrors endured by Jews in Hitler’s Germany.

Many Jews who managed to escape were housed in their Dolphin Square apartment, but so were some of their opera-star friends, including Maria Callas and Mr. Gobbi. Eventually, Ida Cook served as Mr. Gobbi’s "ghost biographer" for his memoir entitled My Life.

After the war, the sisters continued to use their apartment to hold fundraisers for refugees across Europe, including Poles and Russians.

Ms. Mayer-Lismann eventually became the chief lecturer for Britain’s Glyndebourne Festival Opera and her daughter was the founder of the Else Mayer-Lismann Opera Workshop.

Ida Cook continued writing as Mary Burchell and eventually was elected president of the Romantic Novelists Association. After she died of cancer at the age of 82 in 1986, her sister Louise sold their parents’ house and moved into the Dolphin Square apartment.

All of Ida Cook’s manuscripts and letters, some with photographs attached, were in the original house. In her memoir, she admitted that many of the correspondences were reminders of those families they had not been able to save.

"They are packed away because tragic though they are, I cannot bring myself to destroy those pages out of history," she wrote.

Louise Cook had no such problems. For reasons Ms. Sebba does not understand, after her sister’s death, Louise Cook burned everything.

Louise died in 1991, just before her 90^th birthday.

Ms. Sebba said that when she went to Salzburg in an attempt to discover the atmosphere the two women faced when they first met Ms. Mayer-Lismann, she found the juxtaposition of "extraordinary beauty of landscape and music and the unspeakable horror about to be unleashed."

"In a way, their complete innocence was understandable. Britain was never occupied, and there are very few English righteous gentiles at Yad Vashem," she said.

She discovered elements of antisemitism when she undertook her latest project, a biography of Jennie Churchill, entitled in Britain, Jennie Churchill: Winston's American Mother, and in the US, American Jenny.

She said she found it irksome when people accept "the canard" that Jennie Churchill was Jewish, usually based on her maiden name, Jerome.

"Antisemites can’t imagine there was any other excuse for Winston Churchill’s positive reaction to Zionism other than to blame it on the fact that his mother must have been Jewish. She wasn’t. She was an American girl who fell in love with a Londoner, married him over her parents objections, produced a remarkable son, and did some remarkable things on her own at a time when women simply didn’t do such things," said Ms. Sebba.

While Mrs. Churchill seemed to glory in being extraordinary, the Cook sisters seemed to be almost oblivious to their astonishing accomplishments.

The Cook sisters seemed to take their transformation from devoted opera buffs to rescuers who risked their lives to save Jews from Hitler’s inferno as quite natural.

"I financed the work from the romantic novels I wrote, and very strange it was, switching from romantic fiction to tragic fact. When I think of how we lived in a state of high drama part of the time, and continued our normal lives the rest of the time, I marvel now," Ida wrote.

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